Absentee leaders and Zombie Managers: Hidden, Harmful and in need of Help

Flicking through The Psychologist Magazine the other day, I unexpectedly came across the phrase ‘absentee leader.’ [i] Although it was new to me, it immediately resonated, and I was intrigued to find out more. As I did, I realised the phenomena could just as well apply to some managers.

What is the absentee leader?

A 2015[ii] survey of 1,000 working adults that showed that eight of the top nine complaints about leaders concerned behaviours that were absent; that is, employees were most concerned about what their bosses weren’t doing. The complaints weren’t about actively bad leadership behaviour, rather they were about unmet expectations of what leaders should be doing.

Absentee Leadership[iii] has been defined as leadership that fails to lift off; where individuals occupy leadership positions (and enjoy their attending privileges) but neglect to fulfil many of leadership’s core responsibilities. It’s when people occupy leadership roles but fail to be present in them, are psychologically absent (if not also physically absent!). In this way they avoid meaningful engagement with their team.

What are the effects of absentee leaders?

Working for an absentee leader is associated with role ambiguity, health complaints, intra-team bullying and has negative effects on job satisfaction. Unsurprisingly it saps motivation and team and organisational loyalty. It creates employee stress and a talent drain that, in time, affects the organization’s bottom line. That’s to say, zombie management and absentee leadership is bad for people in their orbit and for the whole organization.

Why isn’t it dealt with by the organization?

The research answer to this question this speaks volumes. It appears that organisational capacity is so taken up dealing with other manifestations of leadership malfeasance such as sexual harassment and abuse, bullying, theft, excessive drinking, illicit drugtaking and other maladaptive coping behaviours, that a passive issue like absentee leadership doesn’t even register as a problem.

Absentee leaders and zombie managers despite being much more common and more toxic to both group and individual functioning than the misbehaving leaders described above, are often invisible to those in power. Unlike the highly visible, attention-grabbing stress responses exhibited by some leaders, coping by psychologically disappearing is sustainable over a long period before coming to light. And indeed, such leaders and managers have been described as ‘silent organisation killers.’ [iv]

Why does it happen?

Research suggests some possible reasons[v].

• People promoted from ‘being a good worker’ to management or leadership struggle with the different nature of leadership challenges

• Excessive work stress

• Too many responsibilities

• Role overload

• Too many direct reports

• No support in their role

In other words, being psychologically absent can be viewed as a highly adaptive way of escaping or avoiding a difficult environment which someone has neither the skill nor the resources to cope with.

What can be done?

Bring the issue into the light

The issue has to be brought into the light. The clues should be there: churn, sickness, performance, team difficulties and other data. Alternatively, a staff survey might indicate any problem areas. It’s important to note that such operators might be very good at appearing ‘on it’ in the presence of those senior to them, this is partly how they remain undisturbed. It’s the staff who will be able to identify the zombies at large in the organisation.

Consider the context

There is the big picture to consider. How well does the organization prepare and look after its leaders? Is improvement needed in systems and processes that support leadership? If the organization has produced a toxic working culture, everyone will be trying to cope in their own particular way. Sometimes what is needed is a change in organisational culture.

Team Dynamics

Leadership is a relational activity. Creating psychological safety, building connectivity and encouraging honest contracting around staff expectations of their leader might act to reconnect, energise and motivate a disaffected leader, and team. It helps to bear in mind that most people want to do a good job and that, with skilled help, relationships can be repaired and reset. However, there will be those wholly unsuited for the role, promoted beyond their comfort or competency, or just in the wrong situation. They need help to return to a place they can once again be productive.

Help the individual

Sometimes, its just that someone hasn’t made the transition to being a leader or manager. They don’t understand the expectations of them. They don’t know how to lead a team, manage conflict, delegate or how to develop staff. In this case leadership development or personal coaching can help.

For a great toolkit to support leadership development see our Leadership Development Essentials Bundle

[i] In this article by Dr Laura McHale (2023). McHale, L., 2023, Corporate gaslighting, absentee leaders and the emotions of work. The Psychologist. December. pp 34-37

[ii] This is in Gregory, S., 2018, The most common type of incompetent leader. Harvard Business Review

[iii] This definition comes from this article Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard business press.

[iv] (Gregory, 2018) again

[v] McHale, L ,2022 Where’s the boss? Korn Ferry. Thought Leadership Paper.

See also

Hogan, R., Kaiser, R.B., Sherman, R.A. & Harms, P.D. (2021). Twenty years on the dark side: six lessons about bad leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal, 73, 199-213.

A very good short article by C. Brad entitled: The Phantom Menace: Absentee leadership and its silent destruction on Linkedin. 21.11.2023

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, published by BMI Publishing, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’, published by Pavillion, ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', published by Kogan Page.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Leadership’ 

Evaluation from an Appreciative perspective

People who are interested in the Appreciative Inquiry approach sometimes struggle to understand how they can apply it to the challenge of assessment or evaluation.

How does evaluation work?

To engage with this question, we need first to consider the nature of evaluation. There are two key ways of understanding evaluation. The first sees it as a measurement of change in something real. This suggests that any change to be measured exists independently of the measurer and is an impersonal fact of the world; that ‘knowledge’ exists independently of the knower. 

We might note that were this actually the case then medical research would not so value the double-blind protocol where neither the subject nor the experimenter knows who got the active drug and who the placebo. This design is the gold standard in medical research because of a recognition that a researcher’s knowledge can influence their measurement, albeit unconsciously. So while it is often useful to act ‘as if’ change can be understood in this ‘separate from the actors’ way, it is a convenient fiction not an undeniable truth.

Alternatively, we can recognise change as socially constructed. We can recognise that the change we see is dependent on who is looking and how they are looking. We can recognise that the relationship between the context and the actor is systemic: each affects the other. What we choose to search for affects what we find; what we find affects how we behave in the future. In this understanding awareness of change becomes something that we create through our ways of looking; and we make choices about our ways of looking.

We can further understand assessment and evaluation across two dimensions, creating 4 quadrants. 

We have choices about whether we are mainly focussed on the past or the future; and on assessment or development. We could also consider whether we are mainly interested in learning or control.

Different models of evaluation for different situations - the test isn’t everything!

This useful model allows us to consider different evaluation approaches for different situations. For example, if we are assessing against clear standards, such as assessing someone taking a driving test, then our focus will be on the bottom left quadrant: past/ assessment.

Since much of our assessment, evaluation experience is located in this quadrant, for example exams, tests, and, sad to say, even performance appraisals, many people are unaware that it is only one of at least four ways of thinking about assessment.

On the other hand I am currently involved in helping a group create a ‘strengths-based’ peer review process. This is a conscious decision to create a different evaluation experience.

The model above allows us to see that if the main point of our review is to improve the service in the future then the focus of our process lies in identifying development for the future; and is at the learning end of the control/learning spectrum.

For further information on how to create a systemic appreciative review you are referred to

Appreciative Peer Review: A procedure in the November 2017 Blog of the International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, translated from the original Dutch article by Wick van der Vaart. https://aipractitioner.com/2017/11/09/appreciative-peer-review-procedure/

Embedded Evaluation by Mette Jacobsgaard and Irene Norlund in the August 2011 edition of aipractitioner. https://aipractitioner.com/product/embedded-evaluation/

This article is also indebted to Systemic Appreciative Evaluation by Malene Slov Dinesen in the Aug 2009 edition of aipratitioner https://aipractitioner.com/product/ai-practitioner-august-2009/

Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning

Lots of people feel instinctively that happiness and wellbeing at work must be important. But are they a business necessity or a ‘nice to have’. Surely it makes more sense to ensure your business is profitable and thriving before you start worrying about how people feel?

Increasingly research suggests that investing in employee wellbeing by ensuring positive work relationships, an emphasis on strengths-based development, and worker happiness has productivity pay-offs. So why delay, start promoting positive psychology practices at work today!

Our happiness and wellbeing is at least partly within our control - and it matters!

Here is a selection of evidence-based support for the promotion of positive psychology e.g. happiness and wellbeing at work. It is clear from the evidence that a large component of the happiness we feel is within our control, and that many, more than 50% of the population, are functioning at a less than optimal state. And that our emotional state affects our performance and productivity at work:

1)    40% of the variation we experience in our sense of happiness, compared to others, is within our control. 10% is due to circumstances beyond our control and 50% due to our genetic make-up and inheritance which dictates our set point of happiness. Our 40% is influenced by ‘intentional activity’. In other words we can affect the happiness of ourselves and others. The research behind this assertion is based on twin studies (the genetic component) and the long-lasting effect of changing circumstances on happiness levels (the circumstances) leaving 40% of the variation due to individual actions.

2)    54% of Americans are ‘moderately mentally healthy’ meaning they aren’t mentally ill but they lack great enthusiasm for life and are not actively and productively engaged with the world. 11% languish – just above clinical depression.

3)    Exercise can be as effective at treating clinical depression as medication, and have an effect for longer.

4)    People whose managers focus on their strengths as 2.5x more likely to be engaged at work than those whose managers focus on their weaknesses.

5)    Highly engaged employees take, on average, 3 sick days per annum, actively disengaged employees , 6+ per year.

6)    The least happy employees average 6 days absence a year, the most happy 1.5, in the UK and USA. Liking your colleagues produces the same absence correlation.

7)    Engaged employees give 57% more discretionary effort at work.

8)    Doctors in a positive mood before making a diagnosis make the correct diagnosis 19% faster than those who were in a neutral state.

9)    In a major fast food company an intervention to reduce management turnover (the retention of managers being a major problem for this sector) the approach using AI led to a retention rate 30% higher than when problem-solving techniques were used.

10) The happiest people at work are 180% more energised than the unhappiest, they contribute 25% more and achieve their goals 30% more. They are 47% more productive meaning they are contributing a day and a quarter more than their least happy colleagues per week.

11) The most happy are 50% more motivated than the least happy. 

12) People who are happier are 25% more effective and efficient than those who are least happy.

13) Feelings and behaviour are contagious: negative behaviour has a ripple effect to two degrees, but positive behaviour can reach to three degrees.

14) The more you want recognition, the less you want money in its place.

15) We lose 40% of our productivity flip-flopping between tasks – three lost hours in a typical 8-hour day.

Sources

These findings are collated from various sources, including particularly the work of Pryce-Jones and Lyubomirsky.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

See more Engagement, Leadership Skills, Performance Management and Positive Psychology articles articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books

Guest Blog - Talent and determination get you there, but how do you get them? by Saira Iqbal of Zircon Management Consulting

Zircon Management Consulting is an award winning Business Psychology Company specialising in Talent Management

We know it's important, where does it come form?

One of the most successful men I know grew up in the roughest streets of Bristol, and shared a cramped bedroom with his five brothers until he could  leave the family home and ‘escape’ to his second choice university.  Now a multi-millionaire cabinet minister, each of his milestones made it more and more apparent that his success was no simple stroke of luck.

There were no useful networks that his working class parents were a part of, there was no private school education to teach social poise; but there was drive that came from great ambition and pure determination.

There is a lot of research to suggest that importance of ambition and determination to success (McCann, 2015; Meier, 2011; Rath & Conchie 2008), yet little evidence on how we can develop these attributes.

If ambition, and determination are core principles of success, then why do some people have it in droves, whilst others pay no attention to life’s opportunities?

Why do some have an immense hunger to pursue their aspirations, whilst others are satisfied with living in the moment and focusing on the day as it comes?

Our recent white paper, Winning Attitudes, addresses this very issue. Our interviewees often described adversity, loss, pain and rejection as being the core, pivotal moments that changed the way they viewed themselves and the world around them, helping create the drive they needed to succeed.

 “The loss created the drive.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

“The terrain to success is not a motorway, it is a swamp with ups and downs.” Jeremy Snape, Founder, Sporting Edge

“My father used to put me down, that drove me to prove myself. It gave me determination and focus.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

“You need to have survival mentality.” Adam Freeman-Pask, Olympian, Rowing

Is adversity a necessary prerequisite? 

Similar to the experiences our interviewees shared, the aforementioned cabinet minister, after facing adversity and financial issues in his childhood, often stated that ‘he had to find a way out’. He knew ‘there was more out there for him’. His drive came from a psychological desire to move away from his childhood experience.

Taking this even further, one may ask, ‘does there need to be some type of adversity in order for success to happen?’

McCann (2015) suggests that using adversity as a means for success is a ‘Move From’ mind-set, where the biggest driver is a fear of failure. Success factors such as Burning Ambition, Dogged Determination, Unwavering Belief and Maximising Opportunities, are often triggered from a moment in adversity – such as a disadvantaged childhood.

Whilst specific events can result in a fear of failure, it is the winning mind-set that keeps us going: The Winners among us never give up. They persist, and are determined and unwavering in the pursuit of their goals and their dreams. It is their response to these adverse circumstances that ultimately results in a positive outcome.

“You need to keep going in one direction and strive. If there is a bump in the road, go around it.” Nicola Murphy, CEO, The River Group

“I was determined not to be dependent or reliant on anyone.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. –Jimmy Dean on “Good Morning America,” ABC.

Some surrender.

Others gain a thirst to win.

You may need to battle your circumstances, but it is your attitude that determines whether you will allow your situation to make you kneel over and give up, or rise up through every blow, so you can win the war.

To read more about what makes up a Winning Attitude from the point of view of 42 business savvy corporate CEOs and edgy entrepreneurs, committed Olympic and sporting stars through to charismatic media personalities, please take a look at our White Paper.

Written by Saira Iqbal of Zircon

Women Make Groups Cleverer! (Evidence for collective intelligence)

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:

1. That the collective intelligence of a group is more than the sum of its parts
2. That the presence of women in a group is key to high collective intelligence

How do we know this?

Researchers worked with 699 people, divided them into groups of 3-5 people and set them various tasks. The wide range of these tasks was designed to measure all sorts of different aspects of intelligence. These included visual puzzles, brainstorming, making collective moral judgments, and negotiating over limited resources. They also measured the individual intelligence of everyone. They then tried to see how the individual intelligence scores related to the team performance scores. 

When they did a factor analysis of the group performance scores and the intelligence measures, they found one factor that accounted for 43% of the variance and that was not related to either average intelligence of group members nor the maximum intelligence score. It seemed to be something over and above a simple aggregate of intelligence. They consider this factor to represent a measure of the group’s collective intelligence, with collective intelligence defined as ‘the general ability of the group to perform a wide variety of tasks’. The suggestion is that collective intelligence is an emergent group phenomenon that is a product of more than just existing intelligence in the group.

They ran three different studies of this type and compared results. The findings held. On each occasion collective intelligence was found to better account for group performance than measures of individual member intelligence.

So if individual intelligence doesn’t account for group intelligence, what does? The researchers moved on to examine a number of group and individual factors that might be predictors of collective intelligence. Interestingly many of the factors that are thought to be associated with group performance, such as group cohesion, motivation and satisfaction, didn’t predict group performance.

The Findings

Instead they found:

• That there is a group factor of collective intelligence, conceptually similar to the idea of the individual factor of general intelligence, that has a global effect on performance on many different tasks, and accounts for 43% of the variance in performance. It also is strongly predictive of performance.
• That collective intelligence is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum intelligence in the group.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the average social sensitivity of the group members. This is the strongest predictive factor of group collective intelligence, which, in turn, is a strong predictor of group task performance on a wide range of tasks.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the equality of distribution of turn taking.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the proportion of women in the group.
• It is suspected that the last correlation is related to the others e.g. that the presence of women tends to increase the social sensitivity and the equality of turn-taking in the group.

What to do to improve or enhance the collective intelligence of your project or work groups?

• Help the group recognize that collective intelligence in group decision making and performance is an emergent phenomena of group interaction patterns.
• Help the group recognize that the emotional life of the group is as important as its intellectual life.
• Ensure their discussion processes allow all voices to be heard, and that people take turns to talk, and to listen.
• Ensure that the group is mixed by gender.

For further information see Woolley A W Charbis, C F, Pentland A, Hashmi N, Malone T W (2010) Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science Express. www.scienceexpress.org/30 September 2010

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

Much research has now confirmed happiness has many benefits. One easy way to use positive psychology to bring these benefits into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. All too often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. Starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success not only boost people’s mood in the moment, it also prepares them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow. As an added bonus,  we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.

The exercise is very easy. Essentially as you open the meeting you say something like:

‘Before we plunge into the agenda, let’s just take a few minutes to reflect on what is going well at the moment. What I’d like is for us all to take a moment to think of a recent success we’ve experienced at work. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just something that gives you a little glow of achievement or success. Then I’d like us to share them.’

Depending on the size of your group you can do this as a whole round, or just ask people to do it in threes or fours and then share a few examples across the groups.

What you do next is up to you. You could just say

‘thank you, its great to hear so many good things are happening even as we ….(are experiencing challenges of some nature)’

Alternatively you might ask:

 ‘Who else needs to hear about any of this good news and how can we do that?’

Or:

 ‘So what have we just learnt about ourselves?’

You may have other ideas of how to build on what you hear.

Either way you should find that the meeting goes a little better for this early investment. And over time you may notice that people start noticing their ‘reasons to be cheerful’ more of the time, ready to bring them to your meeting, and that in turn the group’s sense of themselves becomes more positive.

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more How To articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

How To Improve Compliance In Organizations

When people don’t comply with legal requirements organizations can face penalties and fines running into the thousands. To take just a few recent examples:

In November last year a Greater London pizza manufacturer was fined £15,000 after failing to respond to warnings about an unsafe doorway.

Also in November Hertfordshire County Council accidentally faxed details of two cases it was dealing with to a member of the public and was fined £100,000 for breaching the Data Protection Act.

Sheffield-based A4e was similarly fined £60,000 for losing an unencrypted laptop with the details of thousands of people.

While in December Osem UK, a kosher food company owned by Nestle, was fined £27,372 for not complying with the packaging waste regulations.

And in January this year The UK’s biofuels watchdog fined three companies a total of £60,000 for failures to comply with environmental legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector.

Many compliance breaches occur in HR and at present the compensation limit for Unfair Dismissal is £65,300 while the compensation limit for Breach of Contract is £25,000. Over 20% of all UK business are fined due to non-compliance issues. Non-compliance can be a costly business.

To avoid these penalties organizations put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that people comply with regulations and requirements however many psychological factors work against them.

1. The overwhelming attractiveness of short-term goals in an immediate context

Faced with the choice between achieving an immediate, positive outcome now against incurring a probable negative outcome some time in the future, people are drawn to the short-term immediate outcome. Smoking is a classic example. We know full well that at some time in the future it may have a negative consequence, but right now we really want that nicotine hit. Similarly in organisational terms we know that taking a shortcut through the length process of getting rid of someone in the organisation opens us up to the risk of a possible financial penalty, but the short term attraction of solving our problem right now can be overwhelming.

2. The belief that success recognition depends on goal achievement

We usually congratulate people on the achievement of a goal, getting that job, getting promoted, making that sales figure etc. We are not overly practiced at recognising process towards a goal, except when we know we are in a teaching situation, for instance when helping our children learn to read. Here we offer praise and celebration at every possible point; if we waited until they were fluent readers before we offered a word of praise or encouragement they would long since have given up.

If we set a goal of perfect compliance, and offer no reward or encouragement or celebration of success until it is achieved, we are unlikely to reach the goal.

3. A lack of alignment of organisational objectives

All too often in a particular context within the organization it can appear as if choices have to be made between being compliant and ‘getting things done’. These two organisational demands appear to people to pull in different directions: some classics are: filling the job quickly by ‘just appointing someone’ and going through a proper recruitment and selection process; keeping production going and taking downtime for regular machine maintenaince checks; and, dutifully recording every contact with a client, however short, and getting on with the next task. Given these conflicting priorities, people usually consider ‘getting the job done’ by far the most important.

4. Actions speak louder than words

It is a truism that what people do, or how they behave, is a clearer indication of their belief system than what they say. People in organizations watch who actually gets recognised, praised, promoted and rewarded, and assume their behaviour to be that which the organization truly values. So if an organization preaches adherence to standards of practice, but rewards those who achieve goals by any means, then people will see little value in being the mug who adheres to standards and gets left behind in the race to the top.

5. People are strongly influenced by local culture norms of behaviour

The classic recent example here was the MPs expenses scandal. Spoken more or less loudly by everyone involved was the fact that ‘everyone was doing it’. In practice it was highly condoned by the organization. It was a well accepted ‘bending of the rules’ to correct a perceived injustice over MP’s pay. It is highly likely that there was an underlying message of ‘you’re a fool to yourself if you don’t’. It is a highly principled person who can clearly see the wood for the trees here.

This sort of situation exists in many organizations where the left hand doesn’t allow itself to see what the right hand is doing. So one part of the organization can say ‘hand on heart’ we are complying, while another part is busy bending rules to produce outcomes.

What can be done?

1) Strengthen weak feedback loops

In essence the negative effects of non-compliance need to be brought nearer to the action of non-compliance. Many organizations do understand this and have internal mechanism for coming down heavily and immediately on breaches of compliance. However too much of this can create a very coercive environment, which ultimately leads to people hiding breaches, errors, mistakes etc.

So, in addition, the positive consequences of compliance need to be brought much more strongly into view. To take our smoking example, helping people visualize a healthy older age, still able to play sports, play with their grandchildren, clean lungs, more money to help their children, well flowing blood, breathing easy etc. brings the long term benefits of healthy living now more clearly into view. As we can see it also connects to their values, in this example family.

In the work setting it is likely to be: being able to feel proud of where you work, knowing you are helping the environment, that work is fair, reputation, prizes and recognition.

2) Reward effort and progress as well as achievement

Again some organizations already do this. Have charts that demonstrate levels of compliance in different areas, congratulate people who come to ask how to do it right, publicise best enquiry of the week. Essentially celebrate when things get better and when they go right. Highlight the benefits of doing it right at every opportunity.

3) Move from either/or to both/ and

Help people understand the highest priority is, for example, creating a sustainable business, and that compliance and task achievement are both important for this overarching goal. Therefore their challenge is always to be thinking how can we do what we need to do - right?

4) Model what you want

The lead has to come from the top otherwise your compliance officers have a thankless task. If senior management don’t truly believe that compliance is an important investment in a sustainable future that affects everyone, and not just a bureaucratic inconvenience, then why should anyone else?

For leaders it can be very tempting to pull rank to bypass procedures. Just remember that people take their cue about what is important from what you do more than what you say. If you are aligned in word and deed, then the message is very powerful.

5) Build the culture to support your objectives

You want to create a culture where people do the right thing when no one is watching. For this to happen there needs to be good alignment between organisational values and practices. And people need to know what is required of them, and how to spot when they are being asked or being led into being mis-aligned, and what to do about it.

Sarah spoke at the inaugural conference of Governance, Risk and Compliance and  found there was a lot of interest in this topic of the psychology of compliance. 

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

The Hidden Costs Of Rudeness

We all know rudeness is an unpleasant aspect of life, did you also know it has a cost attached? Two researchers, Porath and Erez (2011), have spent years exploring the effect of rudeness on people at work, this is what they have found:

Between 1998 and 2005 the percentage of employees who reported experiencing rudeness once or more in a week doubled from almost 25% to almost 50%. Indeed in 2005 25% of employees reported experiencing rudeness at least once a day.

Surveys reveal that after experiencing rudeness most people lose time and focus, make efforts to avoid the person, work less and slack off more, and think more about leaving the organization.

Experiments by Porath and Erez have demonstrated direct adverse effects of experiencing or even just observing rudeness on cognitive performance e.g. problem-solving, flexibility of thinking, creativity and helpfulness. Experiencing rudeness also increases a propensity to aggressive and violent thoughts and actions.

In addition 94% of people get even with the rude person, or with their organization (88%)

It seems that ‘processing’ the rude encounter engages brain resources so that less is available for attention and memory, making us temporarily ‘less clever’.

These affects occur even in a culture of habitual rudeness, in other words even if a level of rudeness or incivility is normal in your organization it doesn’t mean people are inured against the effects.

Rudeness has a contagion effect: it makes us less likely to help people not even involved in the incident, and to be ruder and more aggressive than we might have been.

So, a culture of rudeness in an organization has hidden costs of:

Reduced performance

Poorer problem solving

Rigidity of thinking

Less ‘citizenship’ behaviour e.g. general helpfulness

Reduced creativity

People avoiding contact with certain others (who might have information they need)

Heighten tendencies to aggressive words or even actions

‘vendettas’ of getting even being played out in the organization

The effect of this on suppliers and customer relationships, as well as internal relations, is not hard to imagine.

Politeness pays

Interestingly Kim Cameron and others at the University of Michigan have been examining the effect of ‘virtuous behaviour’ on employees and organizations. They have found a similar but polar opposite effect, that is, the more people experience virtuous behaviour from others – helpfulness, forgiveness, generosity, courage, honesty support etc. – or indeed just witness it, the more likely they are to demonstrate such behaviour themselves. Such behaviour also has the effect of raising levels of ‘feeling good’ which is strongly associated with flexible and complex thinking, creativity, good team work and so on.

How much are poor manners costing your organization? And what can you do about it?

1. Create a culture of civility and politeness, led right from the top

2. Treat ‘manner’ of management as a performance issue, as well as outcomes

3. Keep stress levels down for people – stressed people are more likely to ‘lash out’ at others

4. Have a code of conduct that makes it clear that people have a right to be treated in a civil manner, and act on complaints

5. Taking bullying seriously

6. Help those who have a hot head to develop compensatory tactics, particularly the ability to eat humble pie and to seek forgiveness after an uncontrolled outburst

7. Encourage managers to recognise power as a privilege, not a stick with which to beat others

8. Beware those who are deferential to those above them and demonic to those below

9. Emphasis that difficult issues can be tackled without resorting to shouting or belittling, and model how

10. Beware of the hidden costs of the ‘high performer’ who is also known to be consistently aggressive and rude to his or her staff: the cost of the means might actually outweigh the benefits of the ends

Further resources

Christine L Porath and Amir Erez (2011) How rudeness takes it toll. The Psychologist Vol 24, No 7

Cameron K (2008) Positive Leadership: strategies for extraordinary performance. Berrett-Koehler. San Franciso

Lewis S (2011) Positive Psychology at Work. Wiley

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Leadership and Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Does Happiness Contribute To Success? Reasons To Be Cheerful

While much research confirms that successful outcomes can foster happiness, it has tended to be seen as a one-way linear relationship: you have to be successful to be happy. But might it be more of a circular relationship? A virtuous circle where being happy makes it more likely you will succeed? In 2005 Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener and Laura King pulled together all the research they could find that addressed the question: does happiness contribute to success?

What does it mean to be happy?

Happy people are those who frequently experience positive emotions such as joy, interest and pride while they experience negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety and anger less frequently. It is this ratio of time spent in positive as opposed to negative moods that predicts those who define themselves as ‘happy people’. From other research we know that the ratio needs to be 3:1 or above to start to move us to describe ourselves as generally ‘happy’.

One suggestion is that happy people feel positive emotions more frequently because they are more sensitive to rewards in their environment. In other words, they find more reasons to be cheerful.

How might feeling happy help us succeed?

It seems that experiencing positive moods and emotions leads us to think, feel and act in ways that add to our resourcefulness and that helps us reach our goals. Positive emotions, it appears, are a signal to us that life is going well, that our goals are being met and our resources are adequate. Since all is going well, we feel we can spend time with friends, learn new skills, or relax and rebuild our energy reserves. We are also likely to seek out new goals, to plan a new project, or get started on booking that holiday for instance. We can compare this with when we are in a negative mood state, when our concern can become to protect our existing resources and to avoid being hurt or damaged in some way.

Lyubomirsky and colleagues reviewed 225 papers and found that feeling good is associated with things like, feeling confident and optimistic, feeling capable, sociability, seeing the best in others, activity and energy, helpfulness, immunity and physical wellbeing, effectively coping with challenge and stress and originality and flexibility. We can easily see how these would help with motivation and tenacity in achieving goals.

Some of their findings

1. Positive affect and job performance is bi-directional e.g. each affects the other
2. Happy people seem to be more successful at work, in their relationships and experience better health
3. Happy people set higher goals for themselves
4. Happy people are more willing to do things beyond the call of dut
5. Happy people are more successful across domains of marriage, friendship, income, work performance and health.

 So effectively yes, happiness does lead to success.

What does all this mean for us?

The key to happiness is frequent positive mood states that outweigh negative mood states by at least a 3:1 ratio. When we are happy good things are more likely to happen and we can generally cope with life better. To pro-actively manage our mood states is a good investment for us and our organizations.

Some questions to help you think how to use this information

How well do you know your mood boosters? How do you find reasons to be cheerful, and how do you help others to do that? How effectively do you build them into your daily, hourly-even life? How good are you at spotting when the ratio is slipping and finding a way to boost your mood?  How can you help others with this?

Lyubomirksy S, Diener E, and King L (2005) The Benefits of Positive Affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin Vol 131.No. 6. Pp 803-855

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Charming Devils And The Mischief They Make

It is increasingly apparent that sometimes people with severe personality disorders (narcissistic, psychopathic, paranoid and schizoid) slip through the organizational selection net. The problem is they don’t appear in our midst with ‘trouble’ tattooed on their foreheads, instead they are often rather charming devils who do very well until they fall (and bring everyone else down with them).

How to reduce the chances of appointing a chancer, a megalomaniac, an egoist, a drama queen, or an obsessive, to your team

Beware that their failings come disguised as virtuous traits, as they bring almost an excess of a good thing. So the dimensions can look like this…

•    Work focused – workaholic – obsessive/compulsive

•    Team player – dependency on others – can’t make individual decisions

•    Action focused – decisive – rushed, rash and impulsive – dictatorial

•    Analytical – paralysed – unable to act

•    Integrity – strong values – rigidity/cult leader

•    Innovative – enthusiastic/ committed – unrealistic

Spotting trouble in your midst:

Someone who has the following characteristics…

Is all things to all people

About whom people hold deeply divided opinions (seen as saving angel by some and dangerous devil by others)

Who wields disproportionate power to their status

Can skillfully play individuals, telling them what they want to hear

Has an uncanny ability to make bad things, things that don’t work, and people in their way, disappear (Teflon man / woman)

Lies and cheats with impunity in the service of some greater goal, and

Demonstrates loyalty only to self

…just might be displaying strong psychopathic tendencies. As they advance up the organization and external control and non-deferential feedback lessens, the bigger the mess they can create.

How can you lessen the likelihood of this happening to your organization?

1. Be brave enough to let go of the problem people early
2. Select for optimal not maximal qualities
3. Do proper biographical tracking history on your top appointments
4. Beware of trading off weaknesses for some great strength
5. Use 360 degree feedback, and listen to what those of no current ‘use’ to the person have to say. The once seduced and now discarded may have a less enamoured view of the charmer
6. Give leaders a stable deputy and make sure they have adequate power to influence, control, veto leadership action i.e. make sure they don’t gain absolute power!
7. Offer support to help self-management such as coaches, mentors, therapists

Sarah Lewis and colleagues at Appreciating Change are accredited to use the Hogan suite of personality psychometrics including The Dark Side instrument. Such psychometrics can help identify those at risk of going seriously off the rails!

(Furnham 2007, The Icarus Syndrome, People and organizations @ work spring edition, Trickey, Talent, treachery and self destruction paper at ABP conference 2007)

Other Resources

Recommended read: Snakes in Suits, Bob Hare

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Leadership and Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Ten Top Tips For Courageous Conversations At Work

What Not to Do

Many people at some point in their working lives have to have a difficult conversation with someone. It might be about a performance issues or something more personal. It can be with a peer, a subordinate or indeed a boss. Very often people are highly anxious, understandably so, about having this conversation. They then either avoid it for so long that when they do tackle it it comes as a complete shock to the other party, or they rush at it like a bull in a china shop just to get it over with. Here are some tips to help produce a good result.

Being Courageous

1.Be clear what you are trying to achieve

You need to be clear in your own mind why you are putting yourself through the trauma of having this conversation and what you hope to achieve. Is it an apology, an agreement about something, a change in behaviour in the future, some sort of restorative action or maybe a resubmission of a piece of work? Be clear what the successful outcome is and be listening for it.

2.Be clear what you are listening for

Being highly anxious can make us deaf. We become so focused on saying everything we have planned to say that we fail to hear the other person quietly saying ‘you’re right’ or ‘I know’ or even ‘you might have a point.’ ‘You bet I have!’ we say and then return to our carefully prepared speech. You need to stay alert to the first signs that you have made your point and be prepared to switch modes to ‘Ok what next’ even if you haven’t said everything you intended. Otherwise you run the risk of producing a new source of conflict as your conversational partner feels unfairly berated when they’ve made a concession. This can sabotage the chances of recovery.

3.Be clear what gives you the right to initiate this conversation

It really helps us reduce our anxiety if we can understand how the conversational intent aligns with our values. For instance you may have to tell someone that they didn’t get the promotion they were after, and give some hard feedback as to why. The clearer you are that giving this feedback is, for example, helpful behaviour(and it is important to you to help and develop others) then the easier say what needs to be said about the current shortfall in their experience, manner, etc. if they are to succeed in the future. Fobbing them off softly is easier but less helpful to them in the long run.

4.Give thought to how you set up the meeting

There are pros and cons to giving advance notice of wanting to have a difficult conversation with someone. The downside is there may well be a drop in productivity as they become distracted wondering what it about. There is also the danger that their anxiety will drive them to push you to ‘just say it now, let’s get it over and done with’. On the other hand, springing it on them unexpectedly can lead them to feel ambushed or tricked in some way. It’s a judgement call and depends on the situation and circumstances.

5.Look for the positive in the situation

Sometimes bad outcomes are the result of good intentions. Was the behaviour caused by a strength in overdrive? For instance maybe ‘too pushy’ can be reframed as a strength of will, zest or tenacity being used with greater force than was appropriate, or where negotiation strengths were needed. Was there an honourable intention behind the behaviour? Many mistakes start out as good ideas or intentions. Be alert to any good consequences that occurred in the situation you want to address as well as the problematic outcome. All of these give you a way to approach the behaviour that make it more likely the other person can owe it, still feel good about themselves, and be open to making changes.

6.Listen first

It is often a good idea, once you have outlined the area, topic, incident that you want to discuss to give the person a chance to give their view on the situation. Many a manager taking this approach has found the other person only too aware that there is a problem, or an issue, or something didn’t go right and that they have been making themselves miserable over it. Of course you’ll also have people who take the opportunity to ‘get their defence in first’ but at least you have the lie of the land before you say your piece, and indeed you may not need to say much at all.

7.Offer reassurance

There is an art to building and maintaining the relationship bridge while trying to convey information or a perspective that the other person might find hard to hear. Think about an opener such as ‘I feel this conversation may be difficult, but I am confident it will be to the benefit of both of us.’  Or ‘my sincere hope is that we come out of this conversation with a shared understanding of what happened and how we can make things better.’

8. Be honest about the effect on you

The more able you are to be honest about your motivation for having the conversation, the more likely you are to be acting and talking with integrity. Authenticity and integrity tend to produce better responses in others. So say something like ‘to be honest I felt really embarrassed when... and I like to feel proud of my team when... that’s why I want to...’ This isn’t about trying to ‘guilt trip’ anyone; its about being honest about your investment in this as well as the favour you are hoping to do them.

9. Use descriptive not evaluative language

Try to stick to an account that articulates what you saw and the consequences in a way that is factual and could be verified by any other observers. Steer away from evaluators like ‘aggressive’ and say instead something like, ‘you were speaking in a louder than a normal speaking voice, leaning in very close to B. Your face was going red and your forehand bulged. I also noticed B leant backwards and raised her hands. She didn’t speak for the rest of the meeting. Later B came to me and said she felt intimidated by you in that meeting.’ Here you can add your concern, ‘My concern is that if B feels like that we will lose her input to the discussion. I know you are very passionate about this topic. I need both your inputs. Let’s see if we can find a way where you both feel able to make your points.’

10. Look forward to solutions, not backwards to blame

The aim of the discussion, if possible, is to create a common agreement about the situation now without getting too lost in counter-arguments about blame in the past. It doesn’t have to be complete consensus, just enough to allow the conversation to move productively the next stage of finding ways forward that are acceptable to you both.

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques to boost engagement at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more 'How To' in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership and Culture change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

How Working With Strengths Can Improve Performance

Our strengths are those abilities we have that are hardwired into our ways of doing things. They are a combination of genetics we inherited and the environment in which we were raised. By the time we are adults some neural pathways are much more practiced than others. We have habitual ways of being and behaving that we find effortless: indeed almost irresistible. These, in essence, are our strengths. We might use them for good or evil, with or without much skill, but they are our go-to, default way of being in the world. While they can and frequently do get us into trouble when applied badly or inappropriately, they are also our greatest asset. And yet....

'This isn't development, it's damage control'

Many of us have been diligently working for years to get better at the things that we are bad at. Time after time the same things come up in the performance appraisal, 360 degree feedback or the personality profile, time after time we resolve ‘to work on our weaknesses’ In this we are in good company.

•   87% of people believe that finding your weaknesses and fixing them is the best way to achieve outstanding performance. (Buckingham, 2007).

However as Buckingham says ‘this isn’t development, it’s damage control’. As someone with poor attention to detail, I live in fear of sending out incorrect invoices. My diligent attention to them, checking and double-checking is damage limitation indeed! And it takes me a disproportionate amount of time.

However, recent research suggests that we are wrong because:

• Excellence is not the opposite of failure
• Strengths are not the opposite of weaknesses
• We will learn little about excellence by studying failure
• We will learn little about our strengths by concentrating on our weaknesses
• By studying our mistakes we will learn more about how we make mistakes
• By studying our weaknesses we will learn more about ourselves at our worst
• If we want to learn about success, we must study our successes
• If we want to learn about our strengths we need to study ourselves at our best

Know your weaknesses

This isn’t to say that we don’t need to attend to our weaknesses, clearly we do. However we can be cleverer about how we do that. In an ideal scenario we fit the tasks to the strengths profile. My ideal bookkeeper (for my invoicing for instance) would be someone for whom attending to detail isn’t an anxiety-ridden, fraught activity where a mistake lurks undetected in every line, but is a delight, an engaging dance with perfection. While I emerge from the task with a sense of ‘fingers crossed’ they would emerge with a sense of ‘job well done’. (For those of you who are worrying about my ability to stay in business, I do now have an assistant who helps with the double-checking!). This of course is another way of dealing with weaknesses: getting help.

Invest your time where you get the best returns

With the time and emotional energy we save by not ‘working on our weaknesses’ we can concentrate on understanding and maximizing our strengths. The research demonstrates very clearly that excellence in individual and team performance is related to the awareness of, and exercise of, our strengths, on a daily basis.

• People who get the chance to play to their strengths every day are 50% more likely to work in teams with a low turnover, 38% more likely to work in productive teams and 44% more likely to work in teams with higher customer satisfaction scores. (Buckingham and Clifton, 2002)
• In high performing teams, people say they call on their strengths more than 75% of the time.

However,

• Only 17% of people use their strengths at work everyday. (Buckingham, 2007)

The jury is out – working on your strengths can help achieve great performance

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Sources

Buckingham, M. 2007 Go put your strengths to work, Simon and Schuster

Buckingham and Clifton,, 2002, Now discover your strengths. Free Press Business

Five Ways to Get Your Team Working More Effectively

Teams are the building blocks of organizations. Teams are groups of people who work together to achieve things, but not all groups are teams. Teams are characterized by interdependencies, in other words team members have to work together to get things done. While this interdependency creates the potential for the whole to be more productive and creative than the sum of the parts, it can just as easily be a recipe for frustration and conflict. How can you help your team get the most out of working together?

Create a positive working culture

Very few people like to be in an atmosphere that is critical, hostile, unfriendly or cold. Yet many teams manage to create precisely this culture because they overly focus on achieving the task and fail to account for basic human nature. Research over the last 10 years has convincing backed up what many of us intuitively knew, a good working atmosphere makes a huge difference to a team’s productivity. What the research found is that the key to the difference between high performing and low performing teams is the ratio of positive to negative comments in team meetings. Interestingly this doesn’t need to be in balance, it needs to be weighted in favour of positive comments, at least by a ratio of 3:1.

A number of things seem to happen once this magic ratio is reached and even more so if the ratio moves closer to 6:1. There is more positive affect ‘good feeling’ generated by the group when they are together. When people feel good they are more able to think well, be creative, and to work with others. In addition people become more willing to contribute ideas, and to work with goodwill through the moments of uncertainty, disconnection or confusion in the conversation until something new emerges. The benefits continue beyond the immediate team meetings, as team members’ actions in their own domains are more in sync with their colleagues, and so the departmental interface issues are lessened.

Help people play to their strengths

Many people have put much effort into attempting to address their weaknesses over many years to little avail. I know this because I meet them at their 360 feedback sessions somewhere mid-career where they say ‘yes, that always comes up as a weakness, I do try...’. This is usually a depressing conversation for both parties.

Recent thinking is that attending more to our strengths will reap greater benefit in terms of performance improvement. This is because when we are using our strengths work feels effortless, we are energised and confident, we are engaged and probably experience moments of flow. Feeling like this we are more able to be generous and patient with others, so the benefits flow onward. Strengths are an expression of highly developed mental pathways and neutral connections that take minimal effort to enact. Help your team members discover their true strengths and then find ways as a team to utilize everyone’s strengths to achieve the team task. Think of your team as an economy of strengths, and work out how to create extra value by trading your strengths.

Create commonality amongst team members

Teams are often made up of people with different skillsets and areas of expertise that tend to see the world, and the priorities for action within it, differently. This can lead to a great awareness of difference, and the differences can come to be seen as insurmountable. Yet at the same time there will be areas of commonality amongst team members, often in the areas of core values and central purpose.

A very productive way to access these commonalities is through the sharing of stories. When people are asked to share personal stories of their moments of pride at work, or moments of achievement or success, or the part of their job that means the most to them, they are expressing their values and sense of purpose in an engaging, passionate and easy to hear form. The listener will undoubtedly find that the story resonates with them, creating an emotional connection at the same time as they begin to see the person in a different light. In the best scenarios as people share their highlight stories a sense emerges in the room of ‘wow, these are great people I’m working with here, I’d better raise my game!’

Move from the habitual to the generative

Groups can get stuck in repeating dynamic patterns. When this happens listening declines as everyone believes they know what everyone else is saying – they’ve heard it all before. And so does the possibility of anything new happening. To break the patterns we need to move from rehearsed speech (which means exactly what it says, speech that has been thought or said so often it just tumbles out) to generative speech (which is the delightful sensation of hearing ourselves say something new).

To help the team make the shift you need to ask questions, or introduce activities that mean people need to think before they speak, that brings information into the common domain that hasn’t been heard before. Positively or appreciatively framed questions as suggested above are particularly good for this. So too are imagination based questions, or example ‘If we woke up tomorrow and we had solved this dilemma, how would we know, what would be different?’ ‘If we weren’t spending our time locked in this conversation, what might we be talking about?’ Or ‘as if’ questions ‘If we discuss this as if the customer was in the room with us, what will we be saying?’ Sometimes just getting people to all switch from their habitual seating pattern breaks old and creates new dynamics.

Create Future Aspirations

When teams suffer a crisis of motivation or morale it is often associated with a lack of hope. A lack of hope that things can get better, a lack of hope in the power and influence of the group or the leader, a lack of hope or belief in the possibility of achieving anything.

Hope and optimism are both great motivators and also key in team resilience. In hopeless situations we need to engender hopefulness. Appreciative Inquiry as an approach is particularly good at doing this as it first of all discovers the best of the current situation, unearths the hidden resources and strengths of the group, and then goes on to imagine future scenarios based on these very discoveries about what is possible. As people project themselves into optimistic futures clearly connected to the present, they begin to experience some hopefulness. This in turn engenders some motivation to start working towards those more aspirational scenarios of how things can be.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help Top Teams and how we can help your organisation with Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

How Does Positive Organisational Behaviour Turn Into Positive Organisational Performance

Positive organisational scholarship researcher Kim Cameron reports that flourishing organisations, that is organisations that are success as well as being described as great places to work, exhibit three key cultural characteristics.

A strong interest in learning from positive deviance

All organisations have an interest in learning from negative deviance, that is, when things go wrong. Rather less have an interest in learning from positive deviance, when things go right. But they are missing a trick. We now know that very often the root causes of success are not just the polar opposite of the root causes of failure. Taking an active interest in learning from exceptionally good performance allows organisations to increase their ability to succeed.

The modelling and promotion of virtuous actions

There is still a strong organizational story that suggests that a successful organizational culture is hard, macho and dog-eat-dog with little time for sentiment. By contrast Cameron’s research has found that organisations that promote virtuous actions, by which he means things such as kindness, patience, humility, generosity and forgiveness reap the benefits in organizational performance. A moment’s thought suggests this makes sense as such an environment means people are likely to take more learning risks than in a blame orientated culture with a minimal toleration of mistakes or errors. Of course the learning process still has to be managed, but the recognition that people are human and that in any human system error is inevitable helps liberate learning behaviour and reduce blame avoidance and buck-passing.

A strong bias towards affirming the best in people and situations

Cameron found that his exceptional organisations had a real bias towards noticing and affirming the best in people. We might say they had developed skill with their appreciative capabilities as well as their critical ones. Being affirmed in your essential goodness as well as your particular strengths helps boost confidence and morale. It also affects motivation. People grow towards the best reflections of themselves. Reflecting back the best of people helps them attain their potential.

This collection of behaviour actively promotes two organizational processes that lead to improved performance

Upward virtuous circles of positive emotion and behaviour

When we see others displaying exceptional virtue, we are inspired to emulate them. People behave better in the company of the better behaved. The kind of culture described above contributes to a self-reinforcing virtuous circle of people feeling good, therefore being more inclined to do good things, therefore more likely to be observed by others behaving well, who in turn are more likely to be inspired to behave at their best, with colleagues, customers and suppliers. All these little bits of behaviour add up to a performance culture.

Social Capital

These three key organizational behaviours also contribute to the development of good social capital. Social capital describes the levels of trust and connection between departments or divisions in an organization. High levels of social capital promote good information flow and low-level decision-making and problem-solving, all of which contributes effectively to local and global performance.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Performance management and appraisals - common pitfalls and how to do it successfully

The good news is performance management works

‘A hospital that appraises around 20% more staff and trains about 20% more appraisers is likely to have 1,090 fewer deaths per 100,000 admissions.’[i] Many other studies have also found this strong relationship between performance management, appraisals and organisational performance. How come then, it is a disliked process in so many organizations? It’s hard to do well

Performance Management is hard to do well. Some common difficulties identified in research include

Ø  Poor quality performance discussions between managers and staff members

Ø  Standardised, jargon filled, prescriptive and overly detailed paperwork

Ø  Line managers lacking competence and commitment to the process

Ø  Employees having a poor understanding of the goals or point of the process

Ø  Rating and pay agendas dominating the discussion, driving out time for performance feedback and development planning

Ø  Lack of follow up or practical action between formal reviews

Many of these problems arise because of a failure to recognise that it’s a social process.

Too often it is seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.

As one of the managers in the Institute for Employment Studies said ‘its about having communications and good one-to-one conversations.’[ii]

What does this mean for managers? What helps?

1. Recognize, and use, the power of positivity

Feeling good accesses many useful personal and organisational qualities – creativity, complex thinking, sociability, resilience and so on. Appraisal conversations are a good opportunity to create some positivity. To do this they need to contain a ratio of at least 3:1 positive to negative experiences for both parties. This means time should be spend genuinely seeking out and paying attention to things that have gone well, successes and achievements over the last time period. At the same time it’s an opportunity for employees to express their appreciation of their manager’s support and guidance over the period.

2. Use positive psychology based appraisal processes

Increasingly practitioners are creating positive appraisal processes for the regular review meetings. For example the enthusiasm story that asks a manager prior to the meeting to think about when they are most enthusiastic about this employee, when they have seen them at their best. The best self-reflection encourages the appraise to understand their strengths and attributes as seen by others. The feed-forward interview encourages the appraiser and the appraisee to focus on building forward from the best of the past.

3. Recognize performance appraisal as an ongoing activity

 In addition, managers should be praising good work as it happens, not waiting until the formal ‘appraisal event’. The diamond feedback process is effective here. In the same way, of course, they should be dealing with problems in performance as they arise. In this way the ‘formal’ appraisal becomes a punctuation point in an ongoing discussion that pulls everything together that has been happening over the last period, and links it to future activities. Formal appraisals really shouldn’t contain any surprises.

4.Learn about success from studying success

One way to help develop a more positive feel to appraisal activity is to spend at least some time focussing on learning from success. There is a common misconception that one can only learn from mistakes and failure. It is true they are important sources of learning – about how to avoid failure. They don’t necessarily teach about success. Studying success tells us about what success looks like and how it is achieved.

5. In building relationships it’s quality not quantity that counts.

Research shows that the quality of our connections and interactions with others vary enormously. What people really value are the high quality connections where they feel something important is happening in the moment of the conversation. In general these are two-way conversations where each is able to build on the other’s contributions to create something new (as opposed to experiencing a one way downloading of information for example). Each party is left feeling refreshed, energised, valued and recognised. They can be fleeting moments. Over time they build to a resilient relationship that can withstand strain, such as the strain of having to give feedback on poor performance. Use your micro-moments of interaction well.

6. It’s a culture not an event

Performance management needs to be seen as a cultural process. The organization needs to create a culture where reviewing group and individual performance after events becomes an unexceptional habit. As each meeting, project or presentation finishes quickly ask how it was for people and if there was anything different they would like to see next time. After a sales pitch review with colleagues how it went. As it becomes part of normal organisational life for everyone to review their own and, when invited, colleagues performance, so the ‘appraisal’ meeting will become less of a ‘dead’ event.

7. Link it to the mission

Make it clear to everyone how these conversations relate back to the organisational purpose so people can see performance management has a bigger purpose than just ‘improving’ them personally.

8. Use the three top tips

Keep it simple

Equip the managers

Avoid forced distribution curves

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more about how we can help you with this and other aspects of Leadership.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

[i] Songs of Appraisal Michael West http://www.bit.ly/West06

[ii] http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/08/performance-management-fine-intentions.htm